Deadweight
by Lady Bracknell
Summary: Edward and his old friend control have become hopelessly estranged.


**Disclaimer: Anything you recognise is the property of Stephenie Meyer. I'm just playing.**

**A/N: Written for the Weathering Heights Challenge at Part of Him on LJ, using the prompt 'shower'. **

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Pitter patter pitter patter plink plink plink.

He listens to the rhythm of the rain against the window, setting it to music in his head. He can hear the swoop and bellow of an orchestra, envisage it precisely. It's a veritable cacophony of melody, swirls and dives, dances and falls, perfectly cadenced and pitched, and every note is the sweltering accompaniment for what he feels. Normally, it helps. Normally, thinking of oboe lines and diminished thirds and picturing the face of an austere first violinist is enough. Enough that he can stay in –

Tonight, though, it's barely adequate. It's a conspiracy, the rain and the sound of her heartbeat and what she's doing.

Her fingers on his skin were one thing. Her tongue, however, is something else entirely.

He groans, which is a bit undignified, perhaps, but _really_ can't be helped, and she looks up from his navel, meets his eye, coquettish and uncertain at the same time. She pauses, gives him chance to protest, and when all he can do is press his head back into the pillow, she smiles and goes back to covering his stomach with delicate, deliberate kisses. Each one does something akin to tearing him into pieces and setting him on fire, and the melody he's trying to focus on shimmers, screaming.

_God_.

He's rationalised this, thought of it as a slow slide towards something he knows is inevitable and wants with every inch, but –

His nails scrape against the pocket of his jeans as he balls his fist and wrangles for control.

Ah, control. His old friend. They haven't seen much of each other lately, but he can't say, hand on still, frozen heart, that he misses the fellow all that much. His nails dig deeper, struggling for some kind of purchase on the fragile denim, and he thinks harder: flutes; timpani; the ebb and flow of some electric rhythm in the air.

He swallows. Better.

She shifts on the bed to kiss his mouth, inching closer, turning his face to hers, and the earnest hunger of the action makes his breath – such that it is – catch in his chest. Her lips are –

Devilish. They push at his limits, tempting, teasing, and he shuts his eyes for a moment and relinquishes what's left of his tenuous hold. He knows the part of him that should be in charge is the part that knows where the boundaries are and how close he can get to them, but sometimes –

Her breathing quickens, hot on his lips, her fingers twisting in his hair. The rain and the orchestra blur, a soft kind of deafening, a crash and a whirl in the distance, and he traces her jaw with his fingers, drawing her closer.

The kiss, he thinks, he could have handled. Probably. He's reasonably used to kissing, and, although of late the odd one has taken him by surprise, he's always managed to keep himself on a relatively even keel. It's her shirt riding up and her stomach brushing his that makes the orchestra explode into nothingness, cascade away from him in a puff of smoke and something that looks a bit like confetti. Disintegrated, this carefully constructed thing that usually lets him retain some semblance of –

Her lips make him lose his train of thought entirely, and he's not sure he misses that any more than his old friend control. His fingers find her waist, and every touch, her skin on his, his on hers, is like a jolt right through him. She's perpetually thrilling, just because she's here with him, just because she wants him.

He never imagined he'd get a chance to feel like this, and that's what the problem is. It's intoxicating, worse than that, a dream – half of him wants to surrender, just to see –

Giving up his control is always an illusion though, because he won't, can't. It's always there in the back of his mind – in the orchestra pit or on the conductor's rostrum – that once upon a time, he was as warm and pliable as she is. More than that – he was as fragile and flimsy and 

breakable, as susceptible to the monsters that lurk in the darkness. He doesn't remember quite how it felt, but –

He was that once, and now, much as she's dragged his human desires kicking and spluttering to the surface, he's not. His old friend control might be a less frequent visitor these days, but he's well and truly not forgotten.

He hesitates to return her enthusiasm, becomes a deadweight. He forces his hands to fall away, freezes. His fingers miss her skin. His lips ache for hers. His heart collapses in on itself, because he wishes he didn't have to –

He closes his eyes, waits for everything to dwindle, to calm, and she feels it immediately and stops.

He waits for a moment, not daring to look at her, focuses on the rain.

Pitter patter pitter patter plink plink plink.

After a second, he can hear the faint picking of a melody, soft and cautious, like a breeze.

Her eyes are bright in the darkness, and the whole room seems to throb with how very alive she is. She strokes his cheek, achingly gentle even though she could hit him with a frying pan and he'd barely notice. He tingles. "Too much?" she says.

"Not nearly enough, actually," he whispers.

He slips his fingers into her hair, lets it fall forward, tickle his neck, his face. She smiles, pleased with and sheepish about her efforts at the same time, and he shifts her away a little, settles her on his shoulder. He kisses her forehead gently, hoping there's apology in it, that she knows what a wrench this is.

He listens to the rain again.

Pitter patter pitter patter plink plink plink.

He hums in the darkness, the melody that's in his head, or the bits he can render, at least.

"What's that?" she murmurs, and her fingers drift softly up and down his arm.

"Something new," he says. "Something for you."

Eventually, she sleeps.

He strokes her hair, listens to the sounds of her breathing, weaves it into the melody, entwines both around the rain. He can't capture her, what she does to him. Not quite.

She's a living hell.

That is to say, she's a slice of heaven, a place he never thought he'd get to see. And yet...

Here it is.

He always fancied it would rain there.

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**A/N: Thank you for reading, and reviewers get a date with Edward and a chance to drive him crazy in a method of their own choosing ;).**

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